1. Technical Field of the Disclosure
The invention concerns a wafer baking oven with revolving baking tongs. Such an oven is used for making baked wafer products such as, for example, flat wafers, low hollow wafers, sugar cones, wafer cups and wafer figures.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Different machine-made wafer or waffle products are known in the food and confectionery industry. These products are distributed in the filled or unfilled state and are generally known as confectionery items. They may include, for example, wafer cones, wafer cups, wafer plates, flat wafer disks, hollow wafers, wafer rolls, ice cream cones, filled wafers, low hollow wafers, small filled wafer bars, wafer sections and the like. These wafer products are baked products of a crisp, brittle, crunchy, fragile texture, made of wafer dough, baked to the greatest dryness possible and having a very low humidity content.
Different individual wafer products may be prepared in different ways. Thus, certain wafer products are baked in their final shape, such as, for example, wafer cones, wafer cups, wafer disks, low hollow wafers and the like.
In the production of other wafer products, a sheet of wafers or an endless wafer strip is initially baked and is shaped into the final form when in a soft baking state. Then, the wafer product is cooled, and it assumes its crisp, brittle texture. Examples of this type of product are sugar cones for ice cream, hollow wafers, sugar wafer rolls, and the like.
To produce certain other types of wafer products, several sheets of wafers are baked, cooled, covered with cream and stacked into a block of wafers. This cream-filled wafer block or wafer sandwich is subsequently cut into small, readily handled pieces of equal size, which are packed into units containing one or several pieces and which may be packaged in an airtight manner.
The different wafer products may be provided with coatings for example of sugar or chocolate, depending on the product. Alternatively, they may be filled with different fillings, for example, ice cream, various creams, chocolate or the like.
The aforedescribed wafer or waffle products are different from the wafles baked by housewives in the conventional manner in waffle irons and representing a soft, roll or pancake-like baked product. These waffles made by housewives are not comparable with the above described wafer products of the wafer industry in relation to their consistency and applicability. Industrially produced wafers, which are baked in their final form, such as, for example, wafer cones, wafer cups, wafer figures and the like, and the individual wafers which are combined in a wafer product after being coated with a cream, such as, for example, flat wafers, wafer sheets and the like, are made in wafer baking ovens.
Wafer baking ovens are operated in most cases in a fully automatic manner, whereby liquid batter or dough is poured into wafer baking molds corresponding to the type of wafer desired. The baked wafers are then removed from the molds after the proper baking time. The wafer baking molds are arranged in opening and closing baking tongs which pass through the baking oven and are opened for the purpose of pouring the batter and removing the individual wafers from the molds. This is done in the front porch preceding the baking chamber of the wafer oven.
The wafer baking molds arranged in the baking tongs are of different configurations in keeping with the type of wafers to be produced in the wafer baking molds. Thus, the wafer mold for the production of wafer sheets or low hollow wafers consists of two baking sheets which are essentially flat on the batter handling side, except for the pattern for the wafer sheets and the recesses for the low, hollow wafers, in which case there are ledges on the side laterally closing off the cavity that exists when the molds are closed. For other types of wafers, such as, for example, wafer or sugar cones, the wafer baking mold comprises a two-part insert, one part being equipped with recesses for the wafer cones and representing a female mold, and the other part entering the recesses of the female mold when the mold is closed and representing a male mold.
The parts of the wafer baking molds are arranged in the baking tongs so that, when a baking tong is opened, the wafer molds also open for the insertion of the batter and the removal of the wafers.
Thus, for example, in the case of a wafer mold comprising two wafer baking sheets, one of the baking sheets is arranged in the bottom part and the other baking sheet in the top part of the tong. In the case of a wafer mold for wafer cones, the female mold with its opening mechanism is arranged in the bottom part of the tong and the male mold is arranged in the top part. The opening of the baking tong is effected either by the mutual pivoting of the two parts of the tong around a common axle or by the lifting of one part of the tong from the other.
In certain wafer baking ovens or automatic baking machines, the individual baking tongs are arranged in a chain of baking tongs. This chain of baking tongs is disposed in the baking chamber, and protrudes from one end of the chamber. The batter charging station and the wafer discharge station of the wafer oven are arranged in the vicinity of the end of the chain of tongs protruding from the baking chamber. Together they form the front port of the wafer baking oven.
During the operation of the wafer baking oven, batter is poured into the open wafer molds at the charging station in the front port. The molds are then closed and transported in the closed state through the baking chamber, wherein the wafers are baked in the course of their passage.
Following completion of the baking, the closed wafer molds arrive from the baking chamber at the front port and, specifically, at the wafer discharge station thereof. There, the baking tongs and the baking molds are opened, and the wafers are removed from the wafer oven. During the subsequent closing of the wafer molds at the charging station and during the baking process in the baking chamber, the water present in the wafer batter is evaporated in the form of steam. The latter must be removed from the area of the front port. This is effected in known wafer ovens in the area of the front port simply by arranging a vapor exhaust over the front port. In order to exhaust the steam from the area of the front port in this manner, a substantially larger volume of gas is exhausted through the exhaust hoods than necessary merely to remove the steam. The gas volume exhausted corresponds to 12 to 30 times the volume of the steam generated in the baking process.
A disadvantage of this process resides in the fact that, in spite of the large volumes of gas exhausted, requiring very high suction capacities, interference from the thermal radiation released by the rotating baking tongs cannot be eliminated. Furthermore, in the case of the known wafer ovens, the escape of steam from the front port into the environment may only be partially prevented.